Spellbound - Cara Lynn Shultz [70]
As I joined him on the couch, Brendan twisted his head to face me.
“As you reminded me, you know nothing about me or my family, right?” He looked at me pointedly.
“Right,” I mumbled. If only you knew what I thought I knew….
“Maybe knowing a little more about me will make you more…comfortable,” he said. I sat down next to him, leaning back on my arms as Brendan clicked through some faded photographs.
“This is my mom, when she was sixteen,” he said, pulling up what looked like a teenage model’s headshot from the 1970s.
“She was a model in the ’70s,” he explained. Of course. Blonde and fresh-faced, she looked nothing like her rakishly handsome son—except for the green eyes that stared doe-eyed and glamorously out of the monitor.
Brendan continued to click through the pictures, showing me old shots of family members from the ’60s and ’70s, often at some gala event. I definitely recognized some celebrities in those pictures.
“My grandfather gave me this one picture that’s so old,” he said, clicking on JPEGs and then shutting them. “What did I name this JPEG?” he asked himself. “Emma, it’s almost 100 years old, this shot. It’s of the house that used to be on this site.”
“This house is new?” I asked.
“Not really new. My great-great-grandfather bought this land and had a house built here. That was the early 1900s. This house, the one we’re in now, my great-grandfather had built, right before the Depression. Oh, here it is!” he exclaimed, and double-clicked on the icon.
Even though the scan was grainy and creased, withered with age, I recognized the house. I’d recognize it anywhere. The image that filled the screen had filled my nightmares. It was the burning white house.
“No,” I whispered, squeezing my eyes shut and turning away. My gaze landed on the view outside the window, where the Hudson River sparkled in the distance, and I knew I’d seen it from this vantage point before. Something flashed through my head—a feeling, a fleeting memory—something, that made me think I’d seen this view before. I tried to grab the memory, but it was gone. A sickening sensation washed over me, and even though I had never had it before, I knew what to call the feeling.
Déjà vu.
“Emma? Are you okay? You’re looking a little pale.” Brendan was staring at me, concerned, as I sat there, refusing to face him.
“Emma?” he asked again, sounding worried. “Emma, you’re shaking.”
The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them.
“I dreamed of that house.” As soon as the words were spoken, whispered with a trembling voice, I regretted it. I returned to face him, to see the “uh-oh, she’s crazy” look on his face. But Brendan wasn’t looking at me like I was insane.
“You dreamed of this house—the one in the picture?”
I nodded.
“What did you dream, exactly?” he asked me quietly, staring back at the grainy scan of the black-and-white photo.
“I dreamed that I was in this house,” I said, tracing the front door to the house with my finger.
Brendan still stared at the picture, but his voice was anxious. “Take a good look at it. Are you sure?”
I would know that house anywhere. “I dreamed it burned down,” I said, my voice shaking.
He sighed, closing his eyes almost painfully. Then, shutting the laptop and placing it gently on the floor, he faced me.
“You know how I was out of school a few days this week?” Brendan asked, leaning in so his face was eye-level with mine. I nodded.
“I went to Ardsley. It’s in Westchester,” he added. “I was visiting my grandfather. I had to ask him about something, as the oldest member of our family.
“There’s always been a joke of sorts among the Salingers,” Brendan continued, reaching out and taking my hands in his. “That we have a—and I can’t believe I’m saying this—curse on us. I always thought it was just a silly story that’s been passed down from generation to generation, because—” he waved at the posh